An AMAZING talk by Ken Robinson @ TED. Please do yourself a favor and listen to this.
There is a patently crazy young man sitting in our office right now. He looks like the stereotypical portrait of the disaffected student. He claims to be the Chairman of the Music Department. Of course… he isn’t. He also claims to be the second coming of Beethoven. Well… sure you are, my friend.
He walked into the Chairman’s office and started playing his piano. Security was called… and he’s obviously mentally impaired, and one hesitates to lay hands on him… but the security officer just called for backup, so… things are about to get interesting!
His wild hair and ripped clothes certainly lend him an air not unlike the stereotypical, wild-eyed “anarchist” of yore. One can imagine him at the Imperial Palace in 1917 commanding a barricade. Yes, patently crazy. Fortunately quiescent though.
It’s sad, actually. He can’t be older than about 25. I wonder what happened to render him mad.
Hm. He was just escorted out between two officers. I told the one of them that what he really needs is a psychotherapist. They’ll “take it under advisement” no doubt. Poor kid.
Filed under: attirance, school, self-work, vie quotidienne | Tags: MEcosystem, school, self-work, vie quotidienne
To whom I did not compare myself. This one had straight, dark-brown hair pulled back in a bun, and… the most amazing face. Oval-shaped, gorgeous skin, high cheekbones, and wonderful proportions. A beautifully shaped eye and full mouth, too. Gorgeous, gorgeous woman. Her dress was a little ill-fitting, but I kept staring (discreetly) at her face. Wonderful smile – straight, even, white teeth, too. I was sorry to have to get off the train and lose sight of her.
Am feeling great. There’s a little tension in my neck after reading something. (The words in my mind were “something I perhaps shouldn’t have” – but that’s not true. If I want to read it, there’s no “should.” I will keep reading until I figure out first and foremost why I want to keep reading, and second off that I’m sick of the consequences. Or I’ll find that I’m not, and keep reading all the same with full knowledge!) But… apart from the tension, and a momentary thought of “Poor lamb,” I’m… fine. That’s a little surprising – or it would be if I hadn’t figured out… why I was staying in that relationship anyhow.
Ok, so! I’ve figured a couple of things out about The Future. After that amazing expansive feeling last night, I… I thought that why don’t I take a couple of weeks off when school ends. Not to search for a job or anything else. But just to BE. I’ll probably get sick of it pretty quick and start searching for a job, but that’ll tell me something too. So my last final exam is on the 14th. If I could cap those two weeks off with a BBQ at Stef’s… that would be wonderful! That’s what I’ll do.
Currently I’m signed up for classes for the fall, but I have no idea if I’ll be returning to school or not. I’m curious to see whether I will! Whether I will want to. And if I do, I will. If not, then not. I can do or not do anything, as long as I’m willing to take the consequences.
So… picked up a couple hours at work today. Will be going to dinner with Karl. Am still trying to decide what book I’m going to read next. Oh, and I would also like to buy pants. The next smaller size!! And sell off all the pants I have now, which are too large. (I can pull the ones I’m wearing down now without undoing the buttons or zipper, and they used to be a little tight before. Woohoo!)
Life’s good, my dears. Now, I’m going to sit and think about this tension, and why what I’m experiencing should so mirror his experience of tension. Is it his that I’m feeling? Now there’s a thought.
So, my French teacher asked us to write a post on the bulletin board about our parents. How have our opinions about them changed over the years? I was going to lie… and then, I thought better of it. Here’s what I wrote (I tapped this out without checking the grammar or anything, so it’s in very bad French):
Quand j’étais très jeune, je voulais l’affection de ma mère et mes grands-parents. Maintenant, je ne me sens concernée de gagner cette affection. Je ne parle jamais avec eux. Pourquoi? Ce que était changé, était mon avis. Mon avis à propos de leur vertu. Ils n’en ont aucun. Je voulais de croire en leur vertu, mais c’était au cause de ma jeunesse. Chaque enfant doit croire en le vertu de leurs parents. Ils deviendront fou s’ils pas. Mais ce temps est passé. Maintenant, je peux les voir pour ce qu’ils sont: malveillant. Ils ne m’ont jamais aimé. C’est triste. Mais c’est vrai.
When I was very young, I wanted the affection of my mother and my grandparents. Now, I do not concern myself with gaining that affection. I never speak with them. Why? What changed was my opinion. My opinion about their virtue. They didn’t have any. I wanted to believe in their virtue, but that was because of my youth. Every child needs to believe in the virtue of their parents. They’ll go crazy if they don’t. But that time is past. Now, I can view them for what they are: evil. They never loved me. How sad. But it’s true.
At least for this fall. Spring, they say, will be do-able. It’s better so. I need to have a lot more money in the bank before I go abroad. Will get a full-time job (an actual one) this summer as well as doing some contract stuff on the side, and hopefully parlay that into a 3/4 time job in the fall.
I’ve wanted to go back to full-time work for a while now. I just don’t feel… complete as a student. It’s embarrassing not to be working. (Even though I am working, it doesn’t feel like it!)
But wait, why is that? When I say “working” I mean like 60 hour weeks, run like hell, office politics, rats on a sinking ship, balls to the wall, hilarity in the server room after hours, go-in-on-the-weekends-because-you-want-to, exciting, frustrating, excruciating, liberating, amusing, boring… full-time work. I’m talking about… ambivalence.
Wait.
I used work as a crutch for the longest time.
In the sense of… an escape.
Work was my life, literally.
I didn’t have… anything else.
And though I say I was able to work on myself from 6pm to 8 the next morning, did I?
No… not really. I sat and watched tv. Read on the weekends. Spent the time I wasn’t at work “relaxing.”
But… if I’m not working (not doing something) I don’t get any work done either. I have to have something else to drive me. I would go completely mad if I had no job. Even with school. Even if someone would support me financially while I was a full-time student, I couldn’t STAND it!! God, that thought is so embarrassing: having someone else supporting me. I can’t imagine.
So… what’s the idea here? It’s got to be something between work-as-distraction and no-work-as-paralysis. What do I do?
Hm. Headache. In a weird place on my head.
When I work full-time the way I work, all my health problems re-appear. Migraines. Stomach ulcers. I nearly kill myself whenever I’m working full-time. But I don’t know any way else to do it.
But as I am now, I’m rotting. Like an apricot. Going softer and softer. A slow, sweet decay.
I wanted to go to France to isolate myself. In order to get more work done. Self-work, I mean. Also a lot of writing. I was thinking of getting a job there. Full-time there is 35 hours a week. A little more than half of what I consider “full time.” And they give 5 weeks of paid vacation there. Five whole weeks. To be paid to do nothing. I don’t understand. But fundamentally… no. Right now, as I am… I couldn’t make the best of it.
I need to wait till I can make the best of it.
But no… see, the problem is that I want someone else to order my life. A boss or an appointment book or something else to lend structure to my days. Since I don’t seem to be able to do it myself. Or… I resent living by an appointment book in my personal life. Why do I want to manage that resentment in my professional life?
Whatever goals, whatever to-do lists I make, I always end up not abiding by. That’s alright… except I often go completely the other way, and incur negative consequences that the to-do lists and goals and stuff were meant to have me avoid.
What happened to the golden mean? Can I ever do anything “in the middle” ? Not at either end of the pendulum swing? Of complete over-work and exhaustion, or complete indolence and failure?
Because both are failures. To run myself ragged to the point where I’m bleeding internally – literally! – or sitting on a shelf and mouldering are both… failures. Of self-regulation? No. “Regulation” is not the goal here. The goal is to recognize the third way. So that I neither need to kill myself with work or kill myself with sloth. So that neither of those are options any more.
There’s this scene in Holiday. (Yes, I might eventually shut up about that movie.) Johnny tells Linda she needs a break “from the things you’ve been doing, you know, day-in, day out.” Linda says “You mean from the things I’ve not been doing days-in, please, years-out.”
Exactly. The things I’ve not been doing days in and years out. The things I was going to go to France to think about.
Do I need to go to France to think about them? Couldn’t I start it, just as well, in America? Why wait?
Wait… this is just running. I ran from mother’s house to S&S’s house, to Austin, to Dallas, to New York, to various places along the way… to get away. I’ve been running, literally, from myself. Wait. What if I stopped running. What if I could slow down? And feel like I didn’t need to run any more? Either running to get away or running to get to a destination… whether physical or psychological? Why need to run? Why need to get there before everyone else? Why need to be better or faster or to use other people as a yardstick. Why?
Why, frankly, set myself up in the same line of anxiety management mechanism I used from 19-21? Or hell, from the first day I started working years before that. Work was a way to get away from mother. I’d leave for school at 8am, go directly to work, and then get home at 11pm. By which time, of course, mother had already left for work. (She always worked nights. Refuses to work during the day. She hates people too much, she says.)
I run myself ragged to get away. From mother, first, now… – or then – from myself.
So what I need isn’t a full-time job, though I could use the money. I have enough money in the bank to take about 5 months off from doing everything. Or hell, 9 or 10 months if I live frugally instead of spending it like water. I won’t. No, no. It’s not about the money – though I hate to spend money on anything but food and books… both of which are old addictions – but… it’s about what the money can’t buy. And it’s about wasting that time along with the money.
Fine. A job I must get. But before I get it… examine why that old temptation to spend 60 or 70 hours at the office (when I was on salary, mind you – no overtime) when 40 would have done just as nicely. Would do just as nicely.
Hm. Lots to think about. I’ve rambled myself into oblivion, I think.
Oh. Voice post cooking around in my head about perfectionism. Or abject fear of making any sort of mistake at all… which is not quite the same thing. It’s not that I reeeeeeeeally want to succeed… it’s that I’m reeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeally scared to fail.
Hm. There’s a thought.
Filed under: FDR, attirance, self-work, vie quotidienne | Tags: FDR, love, school, self-work, vie quotidienne, youtube
So, I re-watched one of Stef’s very old videos this morning, after having lost my appetite for breakfast by something else I read this morning. And I realized… what the hell am I doing? Or, no. Those are self-abusive terms.
If 90-year-old me could look back and see me now, and see one particular choice I am making now… would she be pleased? Would she advise me to put so much energy into achieving something that is now quite impossible (and actually anti-possible, and made MORE anti-possible by my actions)? Would she say “Yes, continue on doing what you’re doing” or would she say “No, give it up. Give this up. Whatever comes later is fine, but right now move on and do something with this time!”
She realizes, as I did not, that what I’m working towards is not only not what I want, but actually ANTI-what-I-want. It is not only not getting me where I want to go, but it’s actively preventing me from ever getting there!
She would, of course, say the latter – to give it up. And tell me to continue on working to build virtue for myself, and not to lose stomach over anything else that I might be reading or anything that’s going on with anyone else. Because not only am I wasting time now, I’m making myself waste more time in the future – time I’ll need to spend catching up to where I could have been if I wasn’t going backwards now. In some areas, I’ve made progress. In other areas, I seem to be going in retrograde. (Retrograde… well, it’s forward motion that looks like backward motion. Actually… that might be a useful metaphor. Because I needed a little spell of this backward motion in order to propel me forward.)
That makes… so much sense. And I’m feeling relaxed and at ease and in good spirits this morning, despite having woken up at 6:30. (I went to bed at 9:30 after having consumed quite a bit of champagne, so it’s not like I missed out on any sleep.) I have a logic test in an hour. Just fine with me. And two French compositions due. Great! And a crisis meeting with my academic adviser. Lovely. This is not that sort of irresponsible happiness of the condemned. This is that feeling of puissance. Of ability to do and accomplish what needs to be done and accomplished.
I’ve been so stressed out lately because I’ve been fighting to make the “wrong” thing into right action. I’ve been fighting against myself. Stressing the system. But fundamentally, my selves are not at war. We’re all one. It’s those “vested interests” that are duking it out with my selves and causing so much sturm und drang. Ah, vested interests.
THAT is what I was buying in that dream, I think. What I’d already spent so much money on without realizing it. What prevented me from taking that heady wine of philosophy, or… well-being generally. Vested interests.
Here’s the video. An oldy, but a goody.
Filed under: random, vie quotidienne | Tags: music, school, vie quotidienne, youtube
I’m sitting here listening to a song (or watching a clip of a great tv show, is more like it) and… enjoying myself. Class in a few moments. I have a paper on Erasmus due… which I haven’t written yet! Bah, who cares. I’ll be able to bang out 2 pages on 16th century pedagogy in about an hour. The prompt was… very open indeed.
Here’s the song I’m listening to. Enjoy!
Am going to do a voice post later on a conflict that I’ve been having with a TA in one of my classes. This is obviously a guy who has no inkling of FDR or even philosophy in general, and I’ve learned a couple of things in interacting with him that might be very interesting indeed.
Feeling pretty good today. Walked to Studebaker and back – 15 blocks each way – to pick up some checks for the department. A nice little walk down a very long hill, and back up it. (They don’t call it Morningside Heights for nothing – Columbia is situated on a hill which is the highest point in Manhattan.) Wanted to run down the hill on the way, but two facts prevented:
1. My pants, as I have lost weight, are getting to the point of being precariously too large to do much fast movement in.
2. I am wearing flip-flops.
So… yeah. I did trot down the hill at a slightly accelerated pace. Maybe I’ll find a hill to run down this evening, just for the joy of moving fast. Perhaps the one at Fort Greene Park. (I love the hell out of that place. It’s not far from my house, either.)
Oh, damn. going to be late for class. So here’s a little nothing post for ya. Ttyl, m’dears.
It’s rainy and kinda nasty, but I don’t particularly care. Am feeling pretty good this morning. Or… good, translated from the Swiss.
Am planning on getting my backlog of skipped schoolwork partially cleared this morning by working on two French compositions that I’ve not revised. It’s free extra credit, so I may as well take it. Actually did and turned in my logic homework this morning (first time in 3 weeks) and… yeah, my paper on Elisabeth Vigee-Lebrun (NOT a painter of my favorite era, nor yet my favorite painter) is beginning to look more appealing to research and write. I’m not going to push myself, though. This feeling – I have to use the French word puissance since I don’t know an English equivalent that captures the feeling I want to express – is still… young. Tender. Like a baby bird, it can’t fly long distances just yet. But as it exercises within the limits of its strength, it grows in power and speed, and will be able to fly longer and longer. In the beginning though, it needs to be nursed along and well-fed.
Am going to print out a bunch of pages of Just Poor, and I have a little 5 minute presentation to do for French. Then I might play the piano. That’s all for today. Classes, composition revisions (that’s more just typing than anything else), a 5-minute presentation on a movie, some piano, and… yeah. A nice pleasant little day. Will go to the gym and read Just Poor while exercising, and then go home, make a lovely dinner, and there it is. Do some journaling, talk to friends online, try again to feel, and then bed. A nice pleasant little day.
Off to go and do that now. Hope y’all are enjoying your day too, wherever you are and whatever might be on your plate.
Filed under: attirance, self-work | Tags: FDR, life story, philosophizing, school, self-work
That comes, of course, from Much Ado.
I have a number of different things to write about. Right now, am slightly worried about a friend, but… am trying to work through that.
I had a discussion with Stef last night about leaving school for a while to go work. I need to listen to the conversation again before I decide anything… but there are things that we didn’t discuss that don’t exactly… fit the model we’d set up – or the solution we’d found. Though the fact that I didn’t think to talk of those things is probably a good indication that they matter less than what we’d actually discussed.
But, what I wanted to treat today… two things, actually. The first:
Everything I do is… wha?
I realized this… about two years ago. That in retrospect, looking back at my life, there’s nothing I’d change. That everything I have done during my life has been right. “Right” in the sense that those choices I made have brought me to the place I am – not necessarily “right” in the sense of moral, ethical, just, optimal, etc. But truly, looking back, there is nothing I would change.
I actually just took about 2 minutes to think about that – and let images from my life flow over me. But… I was right, there. Every screaming match I had with mother, every dinner I stole, every time I ran away from responsibility or conflict, every… every everything has brought me… here. Has brought me to a place where I’m stronger, happier, more confident, more psychologically aware… and has brought me to a place where I can continue to work on those things that will win for me the kind of life I both desire and deserve.
The odd thing, though, is that I believe intellectually – but have a hard time accepting – that my default position should be that everything I think of doing will be right – will contribute to my future happiness. I was confused by that last night. After all, past behavior is in human nature a pretty good indication of future results. If – no matter how wretched my decisions made me feel at the time – the things I did helped me win through to this place… then why would not my decisions be as efficacious in future? Why would not my instincts guide me correctly, as they’ve done in the past?
But what I realized is that this lack of acceptance is telling me something. It’s telling me that I’m not fully integrated yet. (I’d never thought I was – this was neither a shock nor a blow.) It’s telling me that I don’t have that level of self-trust yet. Of course, it’s telling me to keep going – that there’s more I need to discover before I get there. I would have continued working regardless… but now I see where I want to go. Where I need to go. What heights I’m reaching for. Perfection ain’t gonna happen – but… that’s not my fault. But the journey of there, of making things as good as it gets – and then trying to make that best better – is what I’m in it for. :)
NOTE: I began this post over 7 hours ago. Will continue it a little later, but want to post this now.
